The Book of Forgetting

Only love could make me long for all the things I once feared:eternity as silence, forgetfulness, a scar over the raw woundyou left behind. You taught me heaven is not a place, butthe magic circle drawn around two souls,and then you broke it, invisible ink scuffedso you could let the demons in. Yours, mine: it no longer matters,in the end, every ravening hunger is the same, any gaping mawwill swallow the unwary. That was how you left me,with the weight of your embrace still pressed against my spine,and when you let go, I was too slow to catch you.Some things can never be repaired.The best I can hope for, a fire from somewhere deepin the heart of existence, a pure melting of all you abandoned.Forget, I tell myself. Forget and be forgotten. Freedomis another word for amnesia. I’ll rub out the last of the circle,turn these sharp–toothed dreams loose. If rosemary means remembrance,is there an herb, a flower, a dead brown stickthat symbolizes its opposite? I want that, untila shadow on my wall, a voice like yours, like yours,calls me out of a world that let you takeevery bright thing with you when you left.

(Editors’ Note: “The Book of Forgetting” is read by Erika Ensign in the Uncanny Magazine Podcast Episode 9B.)

When she’s not writing poetry and fiction, Jennifer Crow blogs about the intersection of creativity and spirituality as the Unrepentant Scribbler. She’s learning to crochet, and has progressed past the stage where everything is a tangle of yarn and profanity. Her latest short story, “Cover Her Ghost in a Feathered Cape,” can be found in Hadley Rille Books’ new anthology, Ruins Excavation. She lives beside a waterfall in the wilds of western New York state.